Connecting Minds to Learning

WestEd’s SchoolsMovingUp website will feature a free webinar entitled “Reducing School Dropout Rates” on Wednesday, October 14, from 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time (1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time, 7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. CET).

This webinar, will offer research-based recommendations for reducing school dropout rates. Marlene Darwin, Senior Research Analyst at the American Institutes for Research, and Nikola Filby, Director of WestEd’s Innovation Studies Program, will showcase the recommended practices in the Institute of Education Sciences Practice Guide, which includes strategies for identifying and advocating for at-risk students, implementing programs to improve behavior and social skills, and keeping students engaged in the school environment. The webinar will also provide a brief introduction to the resources from the Doing What Works website illustrating how these recommendations have been carried out.

See the webinars page on SchoolsMovingUp for further information, including specific topics to be addressed by this webinar, at http://www.schoolsmovingup.net/webinars.

Today I am leading a workshop with a group of teachers in Basel, Switzerland.  We are looking closely at assessment practices and reflecting on the neurodevelopmental demands that specific assessment tasks place on students.  

During the week,  Laura Sadler was tweeting about the ways she has been using a software program called Kidspiration to differentiate her instruction.  It sounds as though this is a great tool to assist students develop language, spatial, critical thinking, brainstorming and fine motor skills.  She wrote: “Kidspiration is a wonderful program for all learners.  It has activities, templates, and graphic organizers that help students visualize the content they are learning.  Some students need the graphic organizers and visual cues.  The image gallery can be valuable for students who need visual cues.  It also includes icons that teachers or students can use to create their own graphic organizers.  Another helpful tool is the speech tool.  When students click the ear icon then click on a text box the program will read the text to the student.  Another beneficial tool for students who struggle is the word guide.  It provides the student with all definitions of a word as well as synonyms for that word.” 

What strategies or resources are you using to differentiate your instruction with the students you teach?

Today I am writing to you from Basel, Switzerland.  I’m here working with a group of primary school teachers who are developing ways to help their students learn about learning. 

Recently I had an email from Caroline, a learning support teacher in the UK.  She was telling me about some work that she’s doing to personalise the instruction she is giving to her students.  She has developed a list which she calls Bank of Accommodations and Interventions and she uses this list to help her find a strategy to use with a student who experiencing difficulties.   The accommodations on her list are strategies she uses with specific students to ‘bypass’ a weak academic skill. The list includes strategies to adjust the presentation (or the production) of material and information with her students.  In contrast, the interventions that she has listed are strategies that are designed to directly strengthen a weak academic skill.  Caroline then uses a chart to record which of accommodations or interventions she is using with which particular student.

I think Caroline’s example of using accommodations and interventions as a way of supporting students raises some interesting ethical questions for us as teachers.  When, for instance, might we make a professional decision to implement a strategy to by-pass a student’s weakness in order to reach some other learning outcome?  At what point is it better to choose a strategy that is specifically designed to strengthen a weak academic skill?

What are some of the accommodations and interventions that you are using to differentiate your teaching to the students you are working with?  How and when do you decide if an accommodation or intervention is the best strategy to use with a student?